


Terrible Things

by someonestolemyshoes



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Kinda, Song fic, i hate myself basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 15:26:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4924915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someonestolemyshoes/pseuds/someonestolemyshoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time he tells her she’s pretty, Hange is all kinds of filthy -  sweaty, dirty, twigs in her hair and mud on her shoes and a great big disgusting ball of everything Levi hates. </p><p>She is also crying. </p><p>It isn’t like he’s never seen her cry before - they’re nine and crying is just what kids do, especially kids like Hange who like to play with things they probably shouldn’t play with and like to climb trees even though they’re kind of clumsy and so the crying, in it’s self, isn’t all that weird. </p><p>What’s weird is that Hange - Hange, with her print-smudged glasses and ratty ponytail and clothes two sizes too big for her - is crying because a boy called her ugly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Terrible Things

**Author's Note:**

> I mean I can only apologise, I was listening to a sad song so we all know how that ends.
> 
> (I fully admit I was too lay to proofread so sorry in advance!!)

He’s seventeen, the day Levi’s father sits him down with a dusty old photo album and a kind of weight to his shoulders that Levi has never really seen before, and he traces the spine with a wrinkled nose and a furrowed brow and he says, “why is it so dirty?” 

It isn’t like his father to be unclean - things in the house are always pristine, well scrubbed and polished and dusted and the rooms always,  _always_  smell of bleach - so when Levi lets his fingertips dance over the cover of the photo album he’s nothing but confused. 

“I haven’t looked at it in a long time,” is all his father says and Levi nods, glances up through hair that hangs a little too low over his eyes and tucks one finger under the front cover. 

* * *

_The first time he tells her she’s pretty, Hange is all kinds of filthy -  sweaty, dirty, twigs in her hair and mud on her shoes and a great big disgusting ball of everything Levi hates._

_She is also crying._

_It isn’t like he’s never her cry before - they’re **nine**  and crying is just what kids do, especially kids like Hange who like to play with things they probably shouldn’t play with and like to climb trees even though they’re kind of clumsy and so the crying, in it’s self, isn’t all that weird. _

_What’s weird is that Hange - Hange, with her print-smudged glasses and ratty ponytail and clothes two sizes too big for her - is crying because a boy called her **ugly.**_

_Hange has never cared before, about being called **ugly** , and Levi knows this because he tells her so almost every day and she always pokes his cheek and laughs and says, “doesn’t matter, you love me anyways,” which is true, he does love her anyways, and they’re going to grow up and get married whether she’s ugly or not and he always figured that’s why she’s never cared._

_But here she is, sweaty and dirty and crying into the ripped knees of her jeans because a boy called her ugly and she has suddenly decided that she cares._

_“Stop crying,” Levi says, kneels in the dirt with his nose upturned. “Your clothes are getting all snotty.”_

_Hange sniffles and peaks over her kneecaps, eyes all puffy and red and swollen like they get in the summer, when she smells all the flowers even though it always makes her cry, and she mumbles her explanation into her thighs._

_As it turns out, “so what?” is the wrong response, because instead of laughing she just wails a little louder._

_“It doesn’t matter,” he tries again, quieter this time, because the entire situation is foreign and kind of alarming and there’s a steady stream of snot flowing from her nose and down over her lip that kind of makes him want to gag. Hange coughs around a tiny, pathetic kind of sob and rubs her cheeks on her knees.  
_

_Ugly might be a strong word but disgusting is pretty accurate, and Levi is thinking it over and over as he pulls his sleeve over his hand and wipes her nose with it, face wrinkled in distaste._

_“You’re ugly **now** ,” he says, tucking his hand under her chin and lifting her head up a little higher, “but that’s just ‘cuz you’re crying like a baby.”   
_

_“Wasn’t crying when **he**  said it,” she mumbles. Her cheeks have gone all blotchy from tears and the whites of her eyes are bright pink and lined in little red webs at the corners. It makes his stomach hurt, now that he’s really looking at her, and his insides are all achy and and tight and he’s angry, angry that somebody could look at Hange and say something that would break her so much. _

_“You’re not ugly,” he says, and Hange rubs beneath her glasses and stares over at him, eyes all wide and clouded with something like mistrust. “You’re gross,” he continues, “you’re filthy, and your face is still all snotty and stuff, but you’re not ugly.”  
_

_“No?” She’s asking with wide eyes and the corners of her mouth are tugging like she might smile, or maybe she’s gonna start sobbing again, and Levi shakes his head at her.  
_

_“No. You’re pretty. Maybe.”  
_

_Hange grins, laughs deep in her throat and launches herself faster than Levi can blink._

_And then they’re in the dirt, Hange’s lithe frame pressing him down in the mud with her arms around his neck and her laughter in his ears and he’s dirty, damp and mucky, soil grinding into his clothes and his mouth full of Hange’s hair._

_“You’re crushing me,” he says, shoves at her shoulders until she sits back, mouth stretched wide and eyes squinted as she grins. Levi sits up, too, and he’s brushing dirt from his elbows when Hange’s lips press to his cheek._

_Her mouth is still kind of wet from snot and drool and tears but it makes his face red and his ears hot and this weird kind of warmth spreads from his feet to his head, like he’s sinking into a bath. A smelly, disgusting, pretty bath with messy hair and ruddy cheeks._

_“Gross,” Levi says, pulling a face and smudging her saliva from his cheek, and Hange giggles and throws an arm around her shoulders.  
_

_“I know, but you love me anyways.”_

_And he really, really does._

* * *

“Met her when we were fifteen.” Levi’s dad sips his drink and waves a hand at photo album. The early pictures are discolored, all filtered in a faded kind of orange, and some are wobbly and distorted from shaking hands holding the camera. “She was the most beautiful thing in the  _world.”_

And she is, Levi can see it. She is the best parts of him, shiny hair and soft skin and blue eyes, though hers are wider, full of life and innocence and a kind of happiness he’s never seen reflected in himself. 

His father coughs out a bitter kind of laugh and brushes dust from one of the pictures, fingers lingering over a face too much like Levi’s own. 

“Terrible photographer,” he says, “always laughing too much to take a steady picture.” 

“I look like her,” Levi says, and his father offers a sober nod beside him. 

“You do,” he says, “so much.” 

On the next page they’re holding drinks, a bottle of cheap vodka nestled between them and his mother is holding the camera, stretching it out enough to fit the both of them in and the image is blurry, all stretched and a little warped, but he can see her laughter clear as day as she stares at the lens and his father, his father has eyes only for her. 

“We drank too much,” he says, but he is smiling, soft and gentle and a little sad. “We always drank too much. But they were some of the best times.” 

“Oh?” Levi flips through another page, traces his fingers over image after image of her. 

“Hm,” his father hums, “we’d go out at night, sit under the stars with a bottle. She’d laugh at everything, your mother. Laugh at the stars in the sky and the grass on her feet and, well, a lot of things I shouldn’t really tell you.”

* * *

_They share their first drink when they’re fifteen and it’s awful, bitter and disgusting and the kind of taste that sticks to the back of your throat, and Levi swallows mouthfuls of dry air to try and wash it down. Hange shivers and passes the bottle back, chokes out a cough or two and wipes her mouth with her hand._

_“That’s vile,” she says, voice hoarse, and Levi nods even as he takes another swig.  
_

_“It’s not supposed to be nice.”  
_

_It isn’t nice, and it doesn’t get better no matter how many bottles they sneak. They try gins and whiskeys and vodkas and something green that makes the both of them sick, and it isn’t until Levi sneaks a bottle of wine from his fathers cellar that they find something they enjoy._

_Hange likes taking pictures, when they’re drunk. Photos in the mirror, pictures of Levi when he isn’t looking, pictures of the two of them taken with an outstretched arm and all of them are blurred but their laughter is there, choking out smiles over things that probably aren’t funny once the drinks stop flowing._

_But there are so **many**  pictures, both on his phone and hers, and Hange tells him she’ll print them one day, fill an album with memories of them for her to look at when he isn’t around and it sounds nice, but he is too proud to say he will do the same._

_They drink too much, and the both of them know it but there’s nothing else to do, and drinking is fun and it doesn’t matter if they get a little too close, if they’re a little too handsy or if some nights escape them, if they wake with less clothes than they should have, with new welts in suspect places._

_And if they sneak a few sorry, hungover kisses, that’s okay too, because when the hot water washes away the rest of the fog the memories go with it and Levi can pretend that the bite marks and the bruises don’t mean a thing._  

* * *

“I proposed to her,” Levi’s father says, scrubbing a hand over his face, “a couple weeks after she had you. Saved all my wages for the ring, took her out under the stars and I asked her, just like that.  _Will you marry me?”_

There’s a weight settling in Levi’s chest as he listens because he knows how the story ends, and knowing is hard enough but hearing the journey is something else entirely. 

“We didn’t even have a real ceremony, just took off to the registry office with a couple witnesses we pulled on the way there. She was laughing, said the spontaneity made it all the more exciting.

“Couple weeks later we were back in the hospital. No baby, just a metric fuck tonne of needles and wires and she was sick as a dog, and then she was dead.” 

“Why are you telling me all of this now?”

Levi’s father scrubs a hand over his face and sighs, long and heavy, one elbow braced on his knees. 

“Because life can do shitty things. And that  _girl_ ,” he says, and Levi frowns. “The one you’re always hanging out with. Glasses, messy hair, always on the go.”  

“What, Hange?” His father nods.

“Love is hard,” he says, “love is hard and painful and  _god,_ kid, just…steer clear, if you can. I don’t want to see you get hurt the way I did.” 

“I’m not in love with Hange,” Levi says, pulls a face like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, like his father is making the stupidest of mistakes in assuming that there is anything more than friendship between them. His father looks at him, then, long and hard and there’s something so heavy behind his eyes, the kind of heavy that sinks in his bones and pulls his frame until it sags. 

“You keep telling yourself that, son. Please.” 

* * *

_They’re eighteen and **god** he’s been stupid, he’s been so stupid and everything is changing in the worst, most horrible kind of way, and it’s only been hours but he’s already so sick of white walls and disinfectant and wires and machines. _

_Hange fiddles with the tape over the back of her hand and shrugs a shoulder when he asks her, for the third time in minutes, why she never told him._

_“I only found out a few months ago,” she says, “I didn’t think it’d get this bad this fast.”  
_

_“You should have told me,” he says, and Levi folds his arms over his chest and stares at Hange’s feet where they stretch valleys in the bed sheets._

_“I didn’t think-”  
_

_“-yeah, you didn’t think.”  
_

_His chest hurts, sharp and aching right behind his sternum and he holds his breath, swallows the lump building in his throat and blinks back the burn in his eyes._

_“Things will be okay,” she says, tries a shaky smile, and Levi shakes his head a little too fast._

_“This is **not**  okay. This is the exact opposite of okay.” _

_“I know it’s bad now, but-”_

_“There is no **but**!” Levi snaps, fingers clenching into the fabric of his shirt to keep himself still. “You’re  **dying,**  Hange. Dying, as in dead. As in  **things aren’t okay** , and things are never going to  **be** okay.”   
_

_He hates it, the way his voice chokes and cracks and the swell of pain strangling his lungs, tight and overbearing and there isn’t enough air in this room, isn’t enough air in the whole damn world to satisfy him. He sucks one quick, useless breath and bites the inside of his lips and Hange is dying, **Hange**  is  **dying**  and there’s nothing he can do, no way to help and they have no  **time** , and she looks so sick and fragile and  **shit** this is happening, this is real and his best friend is going to  **die.**  _

_“I’m sorry.”  
_

_Levi wipes his cheeks with the back of his hand, and huffs out a breath._

_“Don’t apologize,” he says, and sniffs. “This fucking sucks.”  
_

_“I know.”  
_

_It isn’t a conscious decision, letting his fingers curl against Hange’s where they rest atop the blankets, but he does it anyway, squeezing at her palm and Hange squeezes back, lifts his knuckles to her mouth and rests her lips against them._

_“I’m sorry,” she says again, voice lower than a whisper, tears dripping out from beneath her glasses and splashing onto Levi’s skin. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”_

* * *

_He feels selfish, even thinking about telling her now. She’s curled in the sheets, mask pressed over her mouth and she breathes long, steady breaths in sleep. Everything about her is sunken; eyes and cheeks and the hollow of her throat, and Levi can see peeking bones at her collar and shoulders and the sheets lie heavy over her hips, sinking into the concavity of her waist._

_He wants to tell her he loves her while he can because it’s true, he does - he did when he was nine and he does now, and maybe there was a time somewhere in the middle when he didn’t but looking back he can’t remember it._

_Hange’s fingers curl limply against his and he raises his eyes to hers, and Hange lifts one thin, bony hand to her face to pull the mask away._

_“You’re thinking too hard,” she says, voice weak and tight.  
_

_“Sorry,” he says, and Hange’s lips pull up in a shadow of a smile.  
_

_“What’s on your mind, short-stuff?”  
_

_Levi forces a smirk and pinches at the skin of her hand._

_“Rude,” he says, and he hates how quiet he sounds but the room is just so loud, filled with beeping and whooshing and small winces and gasps as Hange tries to lie comfortably. “It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.”_

* * *

“Funerals fucking  _suck_.” 

It’s the first time he’s drank vodka since they were fifteen and the taste is as bitter as he remembers and then some, because thinking about Hange hurts but  _everything_  makes him do it. 

“I know, kid.” 

Levi blinks through red-rimmed eyes at his fathers figure where he leans against the door frame. 

“What can I say,” Levi says, coughs on a laugh, “You warned me. Life can do shitty things.” 

Levi’s father crosses the room and drops onto the sofa. 

“I was hoping things would be different,” he says, and Levi rolls his eyes to the side to look at him. “I was hoping the world would show you something different.” 

“Yeah, well,” Levi says, and he takes another swig from the bottle, “didn’t fucking happen, did it.” 

Things fall silent, for a while, and Levi almost forgets he has company until his father drags the bottle from his hand and places it on the table, out of reach. Levi drops his head to the back of the sofa and cups his hands over his eyes, fingers digging into his fringe and pulling the hair hard enough to hurt. Everything hurts, his head and his throat and his heart - everything feels raw, leaden and blistered and utterly unfixable. 

“What the fuck do I do?” He says, and when he receives no reply he continues, voice louder and more cracked than before. “Why the fuck did - why isn’t she - what do I  _do_?” 

“You move on, I suppose.” 

“Did you?” Levi asks and his father winces, shakes his head. 

“No,” he says, “too hard, with a constant little reminder on my hip. I love you, son, but be thankful you don’t have to look at her everyday.” 

Levi digs his phone from his pocket and drops it onto the sofa cushions between them and his father picks it up, clicks the lock button and the screen lights up with a picture in a pristine white room. Hange looks healthy, almost, besides a couple wires and needles here and there, and she’s smiling bigger and brighter than Levi remembers, pulling him into the frame by the collar of his shirt and he’s scowling at her, but there’s a hint of a smile in his eyes. 

“You should change that,” his father says. Levi shakes his head, trains his eyes to the ceiling and ignores the wetness leaking down his cheeks and dripping from his jaw. 

“I can’t.” He chokes and clears his throat. “I don’t want to.” 

“It’ll help,” his father offers, and Levi shakes his head hard. 

“No, it won’t. Besides,” Levi reaches over and takes the phone back, opens the lock screen and traces his thumb over the photograph, “I don’t want to forget about her just yet.” 

* * *

Eren is the neighbours kid. He’s nice enough, a little too savvy and a little too naive, maybe, but nice enough. He’s nine, pushing a girl with a bright red scarf into the dirt because likes her and it’s one night when Levi is babysitting - it’s a favor, because Eren’s parents work a lot and he’s owes them for the company they offer on the days when being alone sucks just a little too much - that Levi fishes out his old photo album and drops it on the table beside Eren’s paper and crayons. 

“Why is it all dusty?” Eren asks, and he swipes at the book with one grubby little finger. “Everything else is super _super_  clean.” 

Levi sighs, says, “I haven’t looked at it in a long time, kid,” and slips it open to the first page. 

**Author's Note:**

> To think, I don't write levihan for months and THIS is what I come out with. Thank you to everyone who reads/leaves comments/kudos, I appreciate every little thing from all of you.


End file.
